Joan Burstyn

Joan originates from the USA and is a respected Professor, author and poet. She arrived in Israel to visit her children who live in and around Jerusalem and came to Ulpan Aviv with a desire to speak Hebrew in order to talk and tell stories to her Israeli grandchildren. Joan arrived at our Ulpan with her daughter Judith and together they proved to be fantastic students.

Joan is 82 years old and whilst at first we anticipated slowing down the pace of teaching to accommodate the difficulties of learning a language later in life, we were pleasantly surprised. Joan was an incredibly diligent student working hard during her time in our school, be it studying in the study room or when working with her teacher, Anis. It was clear from the start that Joan is someone who knows how to learn. With some students we focus on teaching learning strategies as well as teaching Hebrew but, with Joan we just focused on Hebrew, with a strong emphasis on getting her to talk. By the end of the course Joan was definitely talking!

We are very grateful to have had the opportunity to meet both Joan and Judith; to hear their stories, to taste their cooking and to read Joan’s beautiful poems and even a short story in Hebrew. Ending their course with a trip to the SHUK (the Jerusalem market) will be an excellent finale to what has been a whirlwind trip around the Hebrew language and we look forward to continuing online!